Watching and Waiting
by Lisa Moulton
Summary: A mysterious stranger had followed the Doctor and his companions from Earth to Logopolis and back again. A stranger that seemed to know the future...and who seemed to have a connection to Lisa that she is determined to figure out.


**Author's** **Notes: While re-watching Four's final episode, "Logopolis", had me thinking that the Watcher, as the eventual Fifth Doctor, could also be the part of the Doctor that was in love with AL. Thus, I decided to write out a bit of "Logopolis" (and "Castrovalva" as it turned out…well, post-"Castrovalva" at any rate) in AL's point of view as to illustrate this.**

**Trivia and In-Jokes: All things were taken from "Logopolis" and "Castrovalva". I just embellished a little for AL's part. The line ****"The catastrophe about to be unleashed was of such a scale that it distorted the structure of time itself and caused a version of me to be overlaid on my present." was taken near word-for-word from the production notes on the "Logopolis" DVD. ****. The first time (but certainly not the last) another version of the Doctor had come to help in times of grave emergencies was Jon Pertwee's "The Three Doctors".**

It had started when the white figure appeared on the far side of the Barnet Bypass on Earth. The brief encounter had been a shock to the Doctor, one that Lisa had sensed so clearly that she had to peer out of the TARDIS doors to see what had caused such a reaction in her friend.

That pale form was fixing the Doctor with an eerie stare that almost immediately shifted to her when she appeared behind him. She took a step back, bumping into the TARDIS doors, as the eyes met hers. Her hearts skipped a beat or two and she couldn't break the gaze until the Doctor put a hand on her shoulder, shaking gently.

"Lisa, get back inside," he was saying. His voice had taken on an odd tone that he almost successfully hid when they went back inside the TARDIS and saw Adric trying to pick the lock of the police box.

She had almost forgotten about the translucent form until she saw it again on the bridge arching the Thames. Again, the figure's gaze shifted from the Doctor to her, only returning to the Time Lord when he started walking towards the pale Watcher.

Lisa couldn't hear much of the conversation due to the din around the river with the water and boats but she saw the Doctor gesturing wildly and the Watcher replying less animatedly. At one point in the debate, the Doctor turned and gestured towards both Adric and Lisa.

Again she back-stepped when the Watcher locked eyes with her. He stared for a few moments before turning back to the Doctor, speaking urgently. When he came back to them and they went into the TARDIS, both she and Adric tried to find out who the mysterious stranger was, but the Doctor ignored their questions.

Once on Logopolis, Lisa would often feel as if she were being watched…and, thus, assumed that the Watcher had followed them from Earth. She would look around only to see nothing…except for a glimpse of pale white out of the corner of her eye that would vanish the moment she tried to get a closer look.

Then the Doctor had to form the alliance with the Master, something she didn't find palatable at all. He'd ushered the four of them – Adric, Tegan, Nyssa and Lisa – into the TARDIS, Lisa protesting all the way. It wasn't until the Doctor pulled her aside with a significant look and – and this surprised her – gently ran the backs of his fingers along her cheek that she nodded and shut the door behind her.

Tegan had gone back to Logopolis to find the Doctor, but Lisa, Adric and Nyssa stayed in the TARDIS, which the Watcher took out of time and space to protect it from the encroaching entropy.

The three companions were wandering the corridors and Lisa was the first to see the Watcher pacing up and down the cloisters in an uncanny parallel to the Doctor when this whole mess started.

Adric and Nyssa had started to talk to each other, but Lisa didn't hear a word of it. The Watcher was looking at her again with that piercing gaze. He beckoned her to him and she slowly approached the pale figure, her back to the two younger companions.

Lisa seemed to sense that the Watcher wanted to reach out to her but was restraining himself. "Who are you?" she asked softly.

When he spoke, he at first sounded…well, very much like the Doctor. It wasn't until he'd been speaking for a few moments that his voice seemed to change, becoming softer and slightly higher pitched.

"I'm…the future," he said. "The Doctor's future…and yours."

Lisa blinked, not understanding. "What do you mean?"

"Lisa, I'm…the Doctor is going to need you very, very soon."

Within her mind, odd, blurry images flashed quickly. They were hard to distinguish, but some looked to be a dim view of Lisa herself from very high up and very far away. In addition, the Watcher's slipup hadn't gone unnoticed by her.

She eyed the Watcher carefully, silently studying the imagery flowing through her mind. One other flash came to her: a blonde in cricket garb. The face was obscured, but the sense she got was unmistakable.

"Doctor…?" she whispered.

The Watcher seemed to smile and brought a hand to her face, gently running the backs of his fingers along her cheek. A shiver went down her spine at the touch, her wings twitching uncontrollably. The touch was identical to the Doctor's moments before.

"You're going to become very important to me," said the Watcher, moving his hand to her hair. "Very…very special. Soon…very soon, the Doctor as you know him will be gone."

"He's going to – "

"Yes." He dropped his hand. "After it happens, you must try your best to stay nearby…he'll…I'll…_we'll_ need you." He looked past Lisa to Adric and Nyssa, still standing where she'd left them. "Bring Adric here…please don't tell either of them of what's to come."

Lisa left him and told Adric he wanted to talk to him. It turned out that the Watcher wanted Adric to bring the TARDIS back into space-time, landing on Earth near the Pharos Project. She, Adric and Nyssa were sneaking around the grounds trying to reunite with the Doctor and Tegan. They were close, but the Doctor threw the Master's TCE, causing the guards to notice them and give chase.

The Doctor, the Master and Tegan hid behind a small building, Adric got the idea to go up to the guards and say they were the alien beings the Pharos Project was designed to contact, though Lisa wouldn't show her wings; that would cause far too much trouble. Tegan came out from behind the building to put in her two cents while the Doctor and the Master slinked away.

While occupied with the guards, Lisa could hear the rumbling and clanking of the Pharos dish adjusting its position. Then there was an alarm, and then the Master's voice making an announcement over loudspeakers. At last, the four of them broke away from the guards and ran to the dish in time to see the Master and the Doctor fighting on the gantry, then the gantry started to tilt. More guards headed up the ladder to the dish.

The Doctor crawled to the end of the gantry, grabbing the rails, trying to disconnect a cable. He finally got it loose, but he fell, hanging from that cable. Nyssa gasped; she, Lisa, Adric and Tegan were rooted to the spot. Lisa wouldn't be able to reach him in time to save him…but, then again…this was meant to happen, wasn't it? This is what the Watcher was talking about.

Lisa felt the Doctor's eyes find hers as he hung there. He managed to swing the cable to a piece of the metal support for the dish, but he couldn't hang on, his grip slipped and he plummeted to the ground.

Lisa, Nyssa, Tegan and Adric ran to his side, the guards pursuing, but they reached him first. Tegan and Nyssa knelt at the Doctor's right side, Adric and Lisa at his left. Lisa took his hand.

"Doctor?" she said.

"Doctor?" repeated Nyssa, Tegan and Adric respectively.

Finally, he moved his head and smiled at them. "It's the end…" he said. "But the moment has been prepared for…"

And he looked up, reaching out and causing Lisa to let go of his hand, drawing the waiting Watcher to him. His hand dropped to the ground and Lisa took it once more as the Watcher and Doctor melded together. She could have imagined it, but it seemed as if the Watcher, just before disappearing altogether, had locked eyes with her once last time.

"The Watcher," said Adric.

"_He_ was the Doctor all the time," said Nyssa.

They watched as the Doctor's features melted into a white blur, first forming the Watcher himself, then revealing a face with lighter, no longer curly hair. The white dissolved to uncover a much smoother, younger face with shining eyes. He smiled at them and Lisa felt the hand within hers squeeze gently. The blue eyes of the new Fifth Doctor shifted to her and she smiled and squeezed back.

The regeneration had been more difficult than ever this time around and Lisa had heeded the Watcher's words to her to the best of her ability: "…you must try your best to stay nearby…"

Now later, after the fact, she confronted the Doctor about the situation during a quiet moment with just the two of them in the TARDIS console room.

"The Watcher…" Lisa was saying. "What was he exactly? Now that I'm thinking about it, his voice…well, it was yours. Not your previous self's, but _yours_."

The Doctor twiddled a few controls as he thought of the best way to answer. "The catastrophe about to be unleashed was of such a scale that it distorted the structure of time itself and caused a version of me to be overlaid on my present."

It made sense in a roundabout way if she thought about it. It wasn't the first time another version of the Doctor had come to help in times of grave emergencies. She said, "So he was a version of you…and I don't just mean you as the Doctor, but you as…the Fifth Doctor you? He was a version of _this_ incarnation of you?" That was an awful lot of mentions of the word "you".

He nodded. "Yes. Why so curious?"

"Something he did…and you did," she answered. "Before we left Logopolis, you touched my cheek…and then the Watcher did the same thing when we were talking in the cloisters. It was the first time you'd done something like that but the Watcher had wanted to the moment I stood near him."

The Doctor leaned on the console with a small smile. She could sense that he could sense (the link did that) that she wanted to ask something specific but was working her way towards it as if trying to make sense of it all.

"He told me," she continued, "that you'd need me and that I'd become special and important to you."

"He was right," said the Doctor, caressing her cheek with the backs of his fingers. That same touch…this was the third time.

She caught his hand. "The Watcher…he was the part of you that was in love with me, wasn't he?"

The Doctor nodded, putting an arm around her. "On the bridge – remember that? – he told me that you would become a key factor in what was to come. He said to keep you close until it was time to send you and the other three to Earth. 'She'll be the light in the dark', he said. 'And she'll help after the change'. He meant the regeneration, of course. You were the only one whose name I could remember without the Zero environment and I always recovered some when you were nearby either way."

That _was_ what had happened. Even when the Doctor was at his weakest he still knew who Lisa was whether or not he was in the Zero Room, the Zero Cabinet or within Castrovalva. It didn't matter. He'd had trouble remembering Tegan and Adric and even how to count once but Lisa's memory had remained crystal clear. It could have been the fact that they'd become linked after falling in love, but that was beside the point. When confusion and disorientation caused his mind to go elsewhere, she was the focal point to bring him back.

And as long as they were together, she always would be.

_The End_


End file.
